Plausible crowd and group formations

Abstract

Applications using real-time virtual crowds can be found in many areas, including the entertainment industry, for urban planning and health and safety purposes. In some of these applications, where the goal is to replicate as accurately as possible the movement of the crowd, less effort is spent in attempting to make the crowd characters appear convincing to the viewer. Crowds that are used for entertainment have a different purpose, however, where the function of such crowds is to increase the user's immersion in the environment. However, real-time crowds are limited by the need to reduce computational efforts to maintain an adequate frame-rate. For example, more background characters are increasingly being introduced to video games to increase realism for the user.